UNIVERSITY workers in Scotland are prepared to take their dispute into the new year unless their employers make concessions on pay, union representatives warned today.

The message from the University and College Union Scotland came as thousands of its members are poised take strike action this week at five universities — Aberdeen, Dundee, Glasgow, Stirling and Strathclyde.

At the University of Stirling, the national action forms part of a three-week strike by UCU members in protest at the institution’s decision to dock 50 per cent of the pay of workers taking part in a marking and assessment boycott, an act branded “punitive and disproportionate” by the union earlier this month.